100/0 RELATIONSHIPS

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you." ~A.A. Milne

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? ~Stephen Levine


Every so often I read or find an article that makes perfect sense to me. I am not saying that I can always live by the 100/0 rule but it is something that I have always tried to strive to achieve.

How The 100/0 Principle Works


What is the most effective way to create and sustain great relationships with others? It's The 100/0 Principle: You take full responsibility (the 100) for the relationship, expecting nothing (the 0) in return. Implementing The 100/0 Principle is not natural for most of us. It takes real commitment to the relationship and a good dose of self-discipline to think, act and give 100 percent. The 100/0 Principle applies to those people in your life where the relationships are too important to react automatically or judgmentally. Each of us must determine the relationships to which this principle should apply. For most of us, it applies to work associates, customers, suppliers, family and friends.

STEP 1: Determine what you can do to make the relationship work...then do it. Demonstrate respect and kindness to the other person, whether he/she deserves it or not.

STEP 2: Do not expect anything in return. Zero, zip, nada.

STEP 3: Do not allow anything the other person says or does (no matter how annoying!) to affect you. In other words, don't take the bait.

STEP 4: Be persistent with your graciousness and kindness. Often we give up too soon, especially when others don't respond in kind. Remember to expect nothing in return.

Principle Paradox

This may strike you as strange, but here's the paradox: When you take authentic responsibility for a relationship, more often than not the other person quickly chooses to take responsibility as well. Consequently, the 100/0 relationship quickly transforms into something approaching 100/100. When that occurs, true breakthroughs happen for the individuals involved, their teams, their organizations and their families.

World Book Night -April 23rd

This is the second year that I am participating in World Book Night. Each year on April 23rd, 25,000 passionate readers spread the love of reading by sharing free World Book Night U.S. paperbacks within their communities. The volunteer book givers each personally hand out 20 books to light or non-readers across America. That's half a million books shared on one day!

2013 Book List


The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
La Casa en Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros -translated by Elena Poniatowska
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
El Alquimista by Paulo Coelho
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; illustrated by Jules Feiffer
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson
Population 485 by Michael Perry
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Montana Sky by Nora Roberts
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Favorite American Poems in Large Print edited by Paul Negri

CGS students bring Chinese language, culture to Brookside - Thehour.com: Elementary Schools

CGS students bring Chinese language, culture to Brookside - Thehour.com: Elementary Schools: NORWALK -- Walk by the Brookside Elementary School library on a Friday and you might hear elementary students uttering their first words of Chinese.

Ancestors being Discovered

 I recently signed up on Ancestor.Com web site. I enjoy reseaching about people in my family. There are many interesting artifacts about family members. The local Fitchburg Sentinel has archived many past issues going back to the early 1900's. I have started to build the Hay and Aho family trees. I found several things that I had completly forgot about over the years.

Raising the Curve

Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000 Failing Public Schools


Ron Berler. Berkley, (256p) ISBN 978-0-425-25268-0

Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Conn., is one of over 45,000 schools labeled “failing” because of low scores on annual mandatory state tests. Yet, according to journalist Berler’s inspiring story of one year in the life of the school, Brookside is hardly a failure. In a compulsively readable and fast-paced chronicle of the lives of administrators, teachers, and students, Berler captures the deep love the teachers have for their students and the teachers’ struggles to teach to the test while hoping to instill a love of learning. Among other students, we meet Marbella, who has great potential but who is not an especially dedicated student, and Hydea, a shy but deeply imaginative girl with great, though untapped, reading ability, who is performing below her grade level at the start of her fifth-grade year. Both girls find themselves in Mr. Morey’s class. Morey is a committed teacher who “spends his days instilling in his students an eagerness to learn” and watching them blossom. With Morey’s efforts, and the leadership of the school’s principal, Mr. Hay, and the school’s reading specialist, Mrs. Schaefer, Marbella, Hydea, and a number of other students show significant academic improvement and blossom when they enter middle school, a truer measure of the school’s success than the statewide test. (Mar.)

Reviewed on: 01/28/2013

On sale March 5, 2013

Classmates

2015 will be my 50th year since my high school graduation.
I was thinking about the many students that were in my class from 1st to 12th grade. I decided to try to remember the names of as many classmates as possible. I left the Ashby school system for my 9th, 10th and 11th years but returned for my senior year.    * (Class of 65)

Dennis Stone            *Linda Koski           * Walter Koski         Jerry Stevenson
*John Mickola          *Al Perry                 * Diane Clay             Bobby Gaudreau
*Linda Bennett          Ray Vachon              Larry Shattuck         Pat Dunshee
*Harry Laaksonen       Mike Nievala           Bill  Atherton          Bill Green
Cynthia Ojala             Maryellen Lajoie     *Veijo Kopsala       *Sharon Haavisto
*Doreen Poudrier       Kandice Walton      Calvin Hopkins         David Crock
Patty Menken            *Tuula Kainu         *Sandra Wiswell      *Sandra Tyler
Bill Tracy                   Harold Flagg            Paul Gerry             *Patty McMurray
*Janice Ouellette        *Janet Ouellette     *Donna Dodge        *Patty Kelly
*Joyce Carney         * Arlene Boudreau  *Linda Peterson       *Cassandra Lawrence
*David Hay                Jane Woodruff        David Docekel        Perry Arujo
Steven Honkala           Larry Bennett.     * Sharon Wilkinson    Albert Chalke
*Donna Weeks.          Sandra Terho         Terry Harrington      Robert Goff
*Larry Bancroft           R. Donnell              P Meredith              M. Gove
Doug Dolan                 C. Burns                 Nancy Boutotte      J. Coleman

Stamford and Norwalk sweep Lone Pine awards - Thehour.com: Elementary

Stamford and Norwalk sweep Lone Pine awards - Thehour.com: Elementary: STAMFORD -- Two Stamford schools and two Norwalk schools were honored by the Lone Pine Foundation at their Fairfield County Academic Gain Awar…